About five months ago–around mid-semester my junior year, I began my search for the right internship. Despite researching potential companies and getting a feel for the positions via interviews, I couldn’t help the inevitable fear of being promised an incredible internship experience but actually getting the stereotype. You know–the coffee running, busywork doing, no-real-effect-on-the-company bad internship experience.

Now about halfway through my internship at Source One, I can say that is thankfully not the experience I have had. Over the last few weeks I’ve worked in a number of different verticals and corresponding projects, far exceeding my expectations of a quality experience.

One of the most rewarding things so far about interning with Source One has been gaining more responsibility as new projects come my way. To make it even better, these projects always vary in the category that they fall under—whether it be supporting the firm’s marketing efforts, or client engagements within the IT/telecom or supply chain spend category. Starting with marketing, I had the opportunity to do an audit comparing Source one’s presence on major social media platforms and the ways we promote our content to other leaders in the procurement consulting space. As social media platforms continue to be such a huge piece of the promotional puzzle, the impact that my work has had on better promoting Source One is very transparent. My assessment will be used to tweak and improve the company’s social strategy.

On the IT/telecom side, I’d spent nearly thirty hours in my first few weeks pulling invoice data from a multitude of service providers into a workbook for our client. While I knew that my hard work would go on to directly help our client work, what made this project even more rewarding was an email I received about three weeks later containing that final client-ready document summarizing all of the data which I had analyzed. It’s projects like these and subsequent follow-ups that really show how I’ve been able to see the direct impact of my work within the company.

Every good organization knows that employees are most efficient when their company makes time to play as hard as they work—something Source One is very good at. One Thursday afternoon, after everyone had wrapped up their day’s work, all eight of us walked through downtown Chicago to 10Pin Bowling–located right next to the famous House of Blues. This occasion was our second quarter team building event and an opportunity for me to get to know everyone in an environment not confined to cubicles. After we selected our teams, we came up with the names of our professional bowling alter-egos, and each found our “lucky ball”, the girl’s team proceeded to dominate the boy’s team in 3 out of 3 games. Despite my team’s poor performance that night, it was awesome to be able to unwind, eat, drink, and get to interact with my Source One team in a more social atmosphere.

Regardless of my initial qualms about falling into a position where my hard work would not be valued or have real impact on the prospective company, Source One has showed that an organization functions best when every member of the team can see the value of their work and ultimately rewarded for their efforts.

Strategic Sourceror

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This site is owned and operated by Source One Management Services, LLC; the leading consultancy providing strategic sourcing resources, procurement advisory consulting and procurement support services to hundreds of companies.

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About Source One

Source One Management Services, LLC is a leading procurement services provider. Since 1992, Source One has been providing companies in all industries with sourcing services including BPO, Benchmarking, Spend Analysis, Category Support, and RFX Management.